Last Thursday, Jim McGuire, one of the organizers of the One Day in July street festival and observance, came to Drinking Liberally and told us a little about the 1934 teamsters’ strike in Minneapolis and the event to mark its 75th anniversary. One of the stories he told was about how the Aquatennial was dreamed up by the Minneapolis business community to repair some of the damage to the community’s reputation and to lure people back downtown.
Nick Coleman told the story on Sunday, too:
There will be fireworks in downtown Minneapolis next Saturday night to mark the end of another Minneapolis Aquatennial. Fittingly, the fireworks will coincide with the commemoration of an explosive event that helped lead to the creation of the Aquatennial, which was invented in the hope of healing the reputation of a city that had been torn for years by economic strife: The 75th anniversary of the 1934 "Teamster Rebellion" that gave American labor one of its most important victories.
Here’s Nick describing the event:
Called the One Day in July Street Festival, the remembrance of the tumult of 1934 will take place from noon to 10 p.m. Saturday in the Warehouse District (at the corner of 3rd St. and 7th Av. N), near the site of much of the mayhem when workers stood together against heavy-handed policing and gangs of strikebreakers to make Minneapolis one of the most pro-union cities in the country.
You can find more about the One Day in July festival linked here.
There’s also a big labor picnic the next day:
There will also be a picnic next Sunday at the Wabun Picnic Area in Minnehaha Park, with speeches and free food to celebrate the anniversary. One of the speakers at the picnic will be Tom Dooher, president of the largest union in the state, the 70,000-member Education Minnesota. Dooher's grandfather, Patrick Corcoran, was an officer of the militant Minneapolis truck drivers' union who was murdered in a 1937 assassination that remains unsolved.
Here’s a handbill about the picnic:
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